Part 19 (2/2)

'Sorry,' muttered Ben-Jak.

'Good.' Dok-Ter beamed happily. He patted Adoon on the head. 'Are you following this, young man?'

'No.' Adoon thought it best to be honest to a great djinn.

'Good,' repeated Dok-Ter as if he had not heard. 'So, they landed and split up. Thor-Sun and Atimkos - your ”Tim”, Ben - placed a series of marker buoys - in reality ma.s.sive syphons - that could be seen from s.p.a.ce but not closer. These ought to have circ.u.mnavigated Earth in a nice curve so that their mothers.h.i.+p could slice through the crust and release the energy.'

'Like cutting a slice off an orange?'

'Exactly, Ben, exactly like that. However, they failed.

Although they had RTC units to keep the ageing process at bay, they lost any sense of time or distance. I doubt they walked constantly either - even Euterpians must have needed rest now and again. The problem with that was that the ground moved and their little ring of marker buoys was disrupted, breaking their links to each other. So, from s.p.a.ce, nothing would be seen.'

'But, Dok-Ter, she must know about the continental s.h.i.+ft.

Every kid does.'

'Adoon doesn't.'

'Yeah, but Thor-Sun's lived thousands of years. She must be super-intelligent.'

'Why? I can think of lots of long-lived people whose IQ is lower than your shoe size. One day I'll take you home to meet them.'

'But it can't be difficult to find things like that out.'

151.

Dok-Ter sighed. 'Oh, Ben, if only people were that observant. Remember, when it occurred, she and Atimkos were walking and so not as dramatically affected by the drift. And remember there were no newspapers or television to tell anyone what was going on. Even in your time, you don't know what's going on under your feet. Would you know about earthquakes in San Francisco or tidal waves in Hawaii if you didn't hear or read about them?'

'No. I s'pose not.'

'Exactly. Well, bearing in mind that it took nearly thirty thousand years for one man to acknowledge another existed on the other side of the world, is it any wonder that the Euterpians wouldn't know the world had literally changed under their feet?'

'No. All right.'

'So,' Dok-Ter continued, 'so what we have then are a group of people, aliens, disguised and adapted into Earth society. I a.s.sume that Mrs Wilding and Dent are two others in the party, trying to reach their friends through time. I found their RTC units in the library at the Grange. Now, I gather from Thor-Sun and the Cat-People that there is a leader somewhere, who has built some kind of sealed-off buffer zone.'

'A what?'

'Like the Ex-Room the students created in c.u.mbria. It's not quite in this dimension but accessible through a series of points. Presumably it's powerful enough to absorb the power released by the marker buoys if they were set off and return the Euterpians home.'

'So, why don't they go? And why has Thor-Sun got those Cat-things here?'

'Ah,' the Doctor chuckled. 'There's the rub. Our Euterpians don't like each other, going by Mrs Wilding's diary and Thor-Sun's explanations. Certainly she and Tim are usually at each other's throats. I think that our Victorian couple are essentially just trying to discover what the other two are up to. Whether they're working for their leader or themselves, I have no way of knowing.'

152.

'So, do you trust them?' Adoon decided it was time he tried to add something.

'Oh, no, my young friend. We trust no one.'

Ben-Jak nodded. 'Least of all, Frowline Thor-Sun.'

'She's not the real problem, Ben. She's underestimated the Cat-People quite badly, I think. She's brought them here, offering them her RTC unit as a bribe to get her off Earth if she gives them the power due to come through the beacons.'

'Which she can't find,' said Ben-Jak, clapping his hands.

'Brilliant. She's totally keelhauled.'

'Yes, thank you for the nautical references, Ben. But you're almost right. She used her memory and limited sonic powers to get us here, presumably guessing that she must have placed a beacon here. That would be fine if you drew a straight line from c.u.mbria to Australia today, but not forty thousand years ago. Baghdad is perfectly safe because she's done her maths and geography wrong.'

'Yeah, and what about those sonic powers?'

'Nasty, Ben. Vicious if misused and I expect she can misuse them better than most. But the Cat-People are immune - as are we in that shuttle - because of the RTC she gave them. That's why I think there's more to Aysha than meets the eye.'

'She doesn't want the beacons then?'

The Doctor shrugged again. 'Possibly. But I think she's thinking bigger than that. I think Thor-Sun told her about the nexus where her leader is and Aysha has guessed that there's even more power to be gained by controlling that. I think she's using Thor-Sun to find a link to that.'

Ben stood up and brushed dust off his clothes. 'OK. So how do we stop them?'

'Divide and conquer?' Adoon asked.

'Jolly good, Adoon. Now, let's go and find Frowline Thor-Sun and give her Lotuss's little present.'

Martin Hickman had never seen quite so much devastation in eleven years in the West c.u.mbrian Fire Service as that which greeted him at (what was left of) the 153 Grange. On driving the first of the three red fire engines that sped as quickly as possible up the dusty, stone-laden narrow lane that was the only driveway to the Grange, he had been the first to see the result of the unknown events that had clearly destroyed the house and grounds.

The Gatehouse was blazing, the roof already caved in, and as his team dismounted, the west-facing wall collapsed, rapidly followed by the rest. Within three minutes, it was a burning pile of stonework and any hope of recovering articles or, heaven help them, people inside, vanished immediately. Trying to fill out his appraisal forms on this one was going to be nigh on impossible. Arson?

Accidental? No one would ever know.

There were other, more inexplicable things as well. That old police box had been there, he was sure. Then there had been a red flash in the corner of his eye and when he had looked back, the police box was gone. No one else saw it, of course. Then there was this long trough which linked the Gatehouse and east side of where the Grange had been.

Looking into it, Hickman felt no heat, no damp, no cold.

Just a rush of air. He could not see the bottom of the trough, but it was very dark down there.

Of the Grange, there were just fragments. All three storeys had collapsed in on themselves and burned away. A few lumps of stone and the odd piece of wood were all that remained of the Georgian property. Hickman was particularly saddened by this - although the Grange had long been deserted, it was nevertheless a building of character and popularity. The discovery of the overturned, gutted and blistered metal framework of a transit van suggested that the three adults and three students from London were more than likely to have been inside when whatever happened happened. Someone was going to have to tell their friends and families. And there would be nothing concrete to say.

'I'm sorry - we know they died,' someone would have to say, 'but we have no idea how.' Were they burned? Was it an explosion? What about the trough - was there some 154 equipment buried by the students, linking the Grange and Gatehouse, that overheated and literally blew them apart?

PC McGarry had cycled over from the village as soon as possible, but his notebook and wetted pencil were held uselessly in his hand. Who was witness to the event? Were Smithers and Coates in the Gatehouse or Grange? Hickman did not care much for Charlie Coates but George Smithers had been local for years. And after that business with his wife . . . well, he deserved better than this.

A shout alerted Hickman and then McGarry to the cliff edge, where the trough had continued through the Grange's foundations and out to the sea. A large portion of the cliff edge had also been obliterated - a ma.s.sive V-shaped wedge had been torn out - and any clues that the gra.s.s and earth might have held were gone with it. But there, down on the rocks being lapped by the cold waters of the Irish Sea, was a body.

Thirty minutes later the police from Whitehaven had identified it as Charles Albert Coates. Although no coroner, the SOC had reckoned that he had been killed by the fall - his clothing or skin carried no signs of burns or combustion.

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